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Complete Streets are streets for everyone. They are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities. Complete Streets make it easy to cross the street, walk to shops, and bicycle to work. They allow buses to run on time and make it safe for people to walk to and from train stations.

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Complete Streets are particularly prudent when more communities are tightening their budgets and looking to ensure long-term benefits from investments. An existing transportation budget can incorporate Complete Streets projects with little to no additional funding, accomplished through re-prioritizing projects and allocating funds to projects that improve overall mobility.

The City of Waterloo turned the four lane Davenport Road into a two lane complete street a couple of years ago. They must have missed the note about little to no additional funding because they spent about $4 million of federal stimulus money on it.

The road is now often jammed as cars wait behind buses, unable to pass. Rarely is a bicycle to be seen in the bike lanes.

When it as being done, and when I now use the road, I get the feeling that the real goal was to make it painful for drivers. Of course this is never explicitly stated, but why else would you build a two lane complete street that is bounded by two four lane roads?

Then I read the article Get on the Bus by Matthew Yglesias in today’s National Post:

Of course the problem is people who drive cars won’t like it — the exact same reason that shiny new streetcar lines are often built to drive in mixed traffic. But public officials contemplating mass transit issues need to ask themselves what it is they’re trying to accomplish. If promoting more transit use, denser urban areas, and less air pollution is on the agenda, then annoying car drivers is a feature, not a bug.

26. The shabby coat that Frank Morgan’s Professor Marvel/The Wiz wore was a thrift store find. It was discovered later that it used to belong to Oz author, L. Frank Baum (his name was sewn into the garment). Baum’s widow and tailor confirmed the find.

Some of the world’s earliest known iron artifacts — ancient Egyptian beads — came from outer space and were hammered out of meteorites, archaeologists say.

The beads, in the collection of the Petrie Museum of University College London, were hammered from pieces of meteorites rather than iron ore and predate the emergence of iron smelting by 2,000 years, they said.

Beads of the Gods, so to speak.

I am always amazed at the technology ancient civilizations possessed thousands of years ago.

A new survey has been released today, which was commissioned by Bell Canada and TELUS, that shows 81% of Canadians “preferred that neither foreign‐nor Canadian‐owned telecommunications companies are favoured in the upcoming government auction… If the government were to create an advantage in the marketplace in any industry, respondents prefer that the government favour Canadian (70%) over foreign‐owned companies. Only 2% prefer that foreign‐owned companies be given an advantage.”

Ok, I was kidding about the amazing part. Is anyone surprised that Bell and Telus released a survey that confirms what they want you to think?

Besides, Ben Klass puts to rest the notion that there is really any advantage for a foreign company that the Canadian ones didn’t get:

According to a recent article in the Financial Post, BCE currently holds license to 19% of Canadian radio frequencies designated for mobile use – that’s if you include the upcoming blocks of 700MHz in the total – or 29% if you don’t. Bell didn’t get most of that spectrum by paying market price, but through a ‘beauty contest’ – the government licensed mobile spectrum to Rogers, Bell, Telus and other regional providers such as MTS and SaskTel for pennies compared to market value.[1] You might call that “existing spectrum holdings previously subsidized by Canadian taxpayers,” something you’ve got in spades but would deny to your competition.

Governments – of Britain in this case – are now using anti-terrorism laws against journalists who dare to tell you about what the people who claim to be protecting you against terrorists are doing to violate your privacy and your rights:

On Sunday, British authorities detained for nine hours the domestic partner of Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian writer who met face to face in Hong Kong with Snowden and has written or co-authored many of the newspaper’s stories based on his material.

The Guardian reported, and UK authorities subsequently confirmed, that David Miranda, Greenwald’s Brazilian partner, was detained by British authorities under an anti-terrorism law as he was in transit from Berlin to Brazil and was changing planes at London’s Heathrow Airport.

One U.S. security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government’s detention and questioning of Miranda was to send a message to recipients of Snowden’s materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks.

The ‘leaks” aren’t about terrorist activities. They are about government-sanctioned security organizations ignoring the law and taking away your rights. This isn’t about fighting terrorism at all.

And today Groklaw – a site that helped to explain how the law affected technology – decided to shut down because privacy no longer exists:

I hope that makes it clear why I can’t continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure. Nothing in that parenthetical thought list is terrorism-related, but no one can feel protected enough from forced exposure any more to say anything the least bit like that to anyone in an email, particularly from the US out or to the US in, but really anywhere. You don’t expect a stranger to read your private communications to a friend. And once you know they can, what is there to say? Constricted and distracted. That’s it exactly. That’s how I feel.

Terrorists blew up a couple of buildings. Our own governments finished the job.

And the funniest thing is that they don’t see the problem. Or, perhaps for them, it isn’t a problem.

BlackBerry is going to be sold this year. How can I be so sure? According to Business Insider, the CEO gets $56 million if it happens:

But what is interesting about Heins’ termination payout is how drastically it changed between 2012 and this year. Back in 2012, Heins would have gotten up to ~$21 million in a “double trigger” payout if the company had been acquired (a “change of control,” in boardroom lingo) and he had been terminated as CEO.

But in 2013, that payout suddenly became worth $56 million.

BlackBerry’s current market cap is about $5.47 billion. Even at a 50% premium for the shares (around $15 or so) it would be worth around $8 billion. That would make the CEO payout about 0.7 % of that total.

Now that’s a pretty powerful incentive for the CEO to make a sale happen this year, isn’t it? Odd, when you realize that he only gets about $9 million a year if it succeeds.

I live in Waterloo, Canada. These stories hit home here. It’s a constant topic of conversation in coffee shops I frequent, even among folks who don’t seem like they’d be interested in technology. But they aren’t gone yet. I live just a few minutes from many of their buildings and trust me, they’re still there.

This stuff makes great front page news, as bad news always does. And no, I don’t expect that there is much of a way out for the company at this point, but they are giving it the old college try.

I’ve been among the first to comment when they’ve done something I thought was dumb. But now it just seems a bit sad, and I can’t bring myself to kick them when they’re down.

Though they were the architects of their own situation, and I adamantly oppose any attempt by the government to bail them out, I do hope they survive in some form.